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First the flag, now monuments honoring the Confederacy may be coming down.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is pushing for the name of a park in the city to be changed. The park is named after Robert E. Lee and it is the latest push to erase history related to the Confederacy in the wake of the deadly church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina last week.
According to WBAL, Rawlings-Blake said she will agree with a request filed by Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and began the process to remove the name of the Confederate General from the city owned park.
She said it will take legal measures to make the change and that is time to move past divisive symbols, WBAL reported.
A member of the Baltimore chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans said the hatred of the flag is an attempt to hide history.
Elliot Cummings told WBAL, "We are becoming like the Taliban. They are going after monuments, they are going after parks, they are going after anything that has the Confederate name associated with it. The battle flag is the flag of our soldiers; the flag of our great-great-grandfathers."
It comes after the Tuesday decision by Maryland's Gov. Larry Hogan to ask that the Confederate flag not be permitted on the state's license plates.
Meanwhile in Virginia, a push has begun to remove a Confederate monument in Portsmouth.
WAVY reported that a city councilman wants the monument in downtown be removed, calling it a symbol of racism that shouldn't be displayed in a public space. The monument is 35-feet tall and has four smaller statues representing the men who served in the Confederate artillery, infantry, navy and cavalry.
Mark Whitaker told council, "Those symbols feed into the mentalities of people who tend to escalate and do harm to persons in our society, simply based on who they are and the color of their skin."
Whitaker said that if the history is to be celebrated, "it should be celebrated among individuals and on private property."
However John Sharrett, III, leader fo the Sons of the Confederate Veterans in Portsmouth, said the city council donated land to build the monument in the 1870s. In the 1920s, it was deeded to the Stonewall Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. Sharrett said if council wants to remove it, they can't since it is deeded to the camp, WAVY reported.
